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Australian Broadcasting Corporation attacked for “biased” program on Israel’s aggression
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has come under fire from Zionist organisations and other media outlets for its broadcast last month of a children’s current affairs program which included a brief and, one might have thought, unobjectionable historical account of the Israeli state’s dispossession and invasion of Arab lands. The subsequent uproar, and the ABC’s craven capitulation, demonstrate the climate of censorship and intimidation which surrounds every aspect of the Australian media’s coverage of Israel’s criminal war on Lebanon.
From the outset, the media has unanimously echoed Israel’s official justifications for its aggression. Ignoring all the evidence that this was a pre-planned operation driven by US and Israeli strategic interests in the Middle East, the media has endlessly repeated the Israeli government’s claim that the hostilities were caused by Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers.
Deliberately obscuring and suppressing the real history of the past 60 years, the present crisis has invariably been portrayed as a struggle between a besieged Israel defending itself against murderous Arab “terrorists” and “extremists”. No objective historical examination of the causes of Lebanese, Palestinian, and other Arab hostility towards the state of Israel has been permitted. Rather, the “extremism” of organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas is explained by entirely irrational and subjective factors—Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, “evil”, etc.
In this atmosphere, the ABC’s “Behind the News”—a current affairs program for children and adolescents, shown in many schools across the country—broadcast a story on July 25 dealing with the background to Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. After describing the destruction of Lebanon’s main airport, electricity supplies, and road network, the program informed viewers of some of the historical issues behind the conflict.
“When Israel was created in 1948 many Palestinians were forced from their land and some came to southern Lebanon,” the report explained. “Hezbollah fought Israel to reclaim lost land and to remove foreign troops from Lebanon.... The recent attacks started when Hezbollah soldiers from Lebanon kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight. Hezbollah wanted to swap the kidnapped Israeli soldiers for Arab prisoners being held in Israel.”
The program also featured a brief timeline of events since Israel’s founding. “1948: Israel was proclaimed as a country for Jewish people, taking much of the land from Palestinian Muslims; 1964: The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established for Arabs in their fight against Israel for taking their land; 1967: Israel took over Gaza and the West Bank and 500,000 Palestinians fled the country.”
This account prompted immediate condemnation. Grahame Leonard, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), issued a formal complaint to the broadcaster. In a clear sign that the letter was intended to intimidate the ABC, Leonard sent copies to several senior government ministers, Labor Party parliamentarians, and right-wing commentators in the media, such as the Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen.
The Zionist leader declared that the “Behind the News” broadcast “can only have the effect of poisoning young minds”.
On August 2, the Murdoch-owned Australian published an editorial castigating the ABC, titled “Hezbollah for kids”. The “Behind the News” program, it declared, “delivered a potted history of the last half-century of Lebanese life that sounded almost as if it had been scripted in Tehran”.
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/abc-a10.shtml
Deliberately obscuring and suppressing the real history of the past 60 years, the present crisis has invariably been portrayed as a struggle between a besieged Israel defending itself against murderous Arab “terrorists” and “extremists”. No objective historical examination of the causes of Lebanese, Palestinian, and other Arab hostility towards the state of Israel has been permitted. Rather, the “extremism” of organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas is explained by entirely irrational and subjective factors—Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, “evil”, etc.
In this atmosphere, the ABC’s “Behind the News”—a current affairs program for children and adolescents, shown in many schools across the country—broadcast a story on July 25 dealing with the background to Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. After describing the destruction of Lebanon’s main airport, electricity supplies, and road network, the program informed viewers of some of the historical issues behind the conflict.
“When Israel was created in 1948 many Palestinians were forced from their land and some came to southern Lebanon,” the report explained. “Hezbollah fought Israel to reclaim lost land and to remove foreign troops from Lebanon.... The recent attacks started when Hezbollah soldiers from Lebanon kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight. Hezbollah wanted to swap the kidnapped Israeli soldiers for Arab prisoners being held in Israel.”
The program also featured a brief timeline of events since Israel’s founding. “1948: Israel was proclaimed as a country for Jewish people, taking much of the land from Palestinian Muslims; 1964: The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established for Arabs in their fight against Israel for taking their land; 1967: Israel took over Gaza and the West Bank and 500,000 Palestinians fled the country.”
This account prompted immediate condemnation. Grahame Leonard, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), issued a formal complaint to the broadcaster. In a clear sign that the letter was intended to intimidate the ABC, Leonard sent copies to several senior government ministers, Labor Party parliamentarians, and right-wing commentators in the media, such as the Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen.
The Zionist leader declared that the “Behind the News” broadcast “can only have the effect of poisoning young minds”.
On August 2, the Murdoch-owned Australian published an editorial castigating the ABC, titled “Hezbollah for kids”. The “Behind the News” program, it declared, “delivered a potted history of the last half-century of Lebanese life that sounded almost as if it had been scripted in Tehran”.
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/abc-a10.shtml
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